The cost of being a loner

[mythology]

44. I had a somewhat similar situation a few years ago

I needed a minor surgery as a precursor for a much larger surgery a few months later. For the first one, I got 6 days notice of the surgery, and of the two people I felt I could reasonably ask, one worked at a university and the surgery was right after school started and the other could only pick me up after surgery.

So I logged on to the public transit website and found I could make the 30 mile trip down to Foxborough (estimated driving time 40 minutes) in a mere 110 minutes, including a bus trip, a commuter rail trip and ending with 3.5 mile walk from the last train stop to the hospital for knee surgery. Knowing how public transit is, and knowing how bad I am at navigating it, I gave myself an extra hour. And then promptly took the bus in the wrong direction and ended up having to take two buses, a subway trip, the commuter rail to a different station and then an 11 mile cab ride to the hospital and I was still only 10 minutes late for check in.

After I wake up from surgery which went really quickly, I had two meetings with the doctor (one of which I have absolutely no memory of) I got to spend the next hour reassuring the nurses that my ride home was going to be there at the time they had anticipated me being ready to be discharged. Because it was my friend's fault that they were ready to discharge me an hour early.

I did let my mom pick me up for the second surgery since I was crashing at their place since my life isn't set up for 7 weeks of no driving. Unfortunately my mom isn't really able to deal with Boston traffic and trying to follow a gps, so I had to remain awake and aware long enough to navigate her out of the city in rush hour traffic in the winter so it was dark out, driving my stepdad's oversized SUV since I wasn't in a position to fit into her car's backseat with a leg locked in an immobilizer.

Fun times. I did get to miss shoveling any snow during the winter where Boston got over 110 inches of snow. It did look mighty impressive from the window.

You may be a loner, but it does sometimes lead to some interesting funny stories later.